Meta Data

To be included in the topic from my post dated January 25th Link Here you must put your meta data into your template to maximize your potential on the directory sites.

Once you have registered your URL on the sites listed on the January 25th post, they will send out their spiders to crawl your blog. They will be searching for keywords in the meta data area of your template. So, this information would be good to add prior to registering your URL. If you have already registered your URL, add this meta data now.

Note: Obviously, customize it to reflect your own information for your own weblog.

These meta elements go inside the head section of your template: See Picture



Once you have republished (or published for the first time) your blog, the search engines will pick up these keywords. It takes time for them to pick them up. It may take months for some. However, over the long-term, this data will help to increase your traffic and effectiveness from publishing your blog in the directories listed on my above mentioned post.

Social Network Aggregators...Consolidation For Sanity!

So, you've been staying up until 3:00am to touch base with all of your social networking contacts in your chosen networks. Feeling like you have a million login names and passwords to remember for each of your networks.

You are so exhausted that your writing is severely suffering and your blogging isn't consistent.



Feeling burnt out, you wonder what your options are. Which networks do you sacrifice?

The answer?...None!

Currently, the most efficient option for consolidating your networking is to choose one of a relatively new breed of applications called social network aggregators. These attempt to consolidate (with varying success) your variety of social networking profiles into one.

Welcome back your sanity!



Some of the biggest competitors in this field include the following.

8Hands
"With 8hands, you can organize and optimize your different online profiles from one place, while receiving real time notifications of your events...
IM and share online content with your friends: Just drag and drop your YouTube videos, Flickr pics and more into our easy to use chat window.
Get notifications of new comments, messages, friend requests, videos, feeds and more - in real time!
Receive summaries and statistics on your social networking activities."

Claim ID
"One of the greatest things about having a claimID page is that you can easily provide people searching for you with a real picture of your identity. With claimID you can claim your blog, your website and news articles that mention your name into a central place. If someone is searching for you, they previously might not have found all of those important pages. With claimID, you can put your best face forward and let people see the identity you wish to present."

Fuser
"Fuser develops tools that improve Internet user's digital lifestyles. Our tools make it easier to communicate online, whether that means one web-based inbox for email and social networks or some other method our community has yet to dream up. You tell us! Our users play a key role in the development of our products."



Minggl
"Minggl is a toolbar that brings your social sites together in one place, feeding you the latest activities of friends, no matter where you are on the web...Get notifications of email, comments, and friend activity from Facebook while browsing other websites...Flip quickly between profiles such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube without logging in."

MyLifeBrand
"We give you a place to manage your social networks and message your social network friends. We have upgraded this service by adding Hi5 and Tagged...a place to create a community of your own. We are introducing tools that allow you to auto create blogs, wikis, event calendars and forums. The cool thing about our communities is you can add up to 8 live, browsable URL’s to add to the content of your community. Plus your community can have access to the groups pages and friends on other social networks!"

otherEgo.com
"It's simple to share your Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, Xanga, Blogs, Websites, or anything else that has a URL in your otherEgo profile!...A social network aggregator simply links and/or shows your profiles from other social networks (i.e. Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, Youtube). Most social network aggregators accomplish this by providing a simple link and image that you can click on. OtherEgo allows you to load them inside your profile. It's kind of like a social network profile browser."

Profilactic
"Profilactic is a social media aggregator that pulls in just about everything you and your friends create online...We support 111 social sites by default; however, you can add as many custom sites as you'd like, so essentially we support them all."

Profileomat
"profileomat.com is a shareable Profile Aggregator that lists all your personal Websites, Social Networks, Blogs, Contact Info, Photo Albums and other Profiles in one Profile. Plus: People can leave a message in your Profile (this is something between a guestbook and reputation system)."

ProfileFly
"Profilefly.com is a site that makes it easy to Control + Promote all of your:
Profiles – Social Networks, Blogs, Photo Sites, Professional, Love & Dating, Social Bookmark Sites, Personal Websites
Contacts – Email & Instant Messengers
Bookmarks – Video links, Cool Sites, News, & more
At ProfileFly.com you can also stream content from your favorite sites like Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, & Last.FM. All you have to do is include the RSS feed from the site your adding to your Profile."

Readr
"Readr works with most blog, photo, and video services, from Flickr and Blogger to YouTube, Myspace, and Facebook...Keep up with your friends. Find out when your friends post new pictures, write in their blog, post a video, and more - no matter which sites they use."

Snag
"Snag aggregates information from your accounts at various social networks. Instead of having to visit each of your networks separately, you can find friends, read messages, and get updates from all of your networks in one place by using Snag...While Snag supports a few of the popular social networks, there are so many more that aren't included here. In developing Snag, we simply chose the networks that we use and know."

Second Brain
"Second Brain is an interface for all your online content. With smart collection tools and community features, we make it easy to create, manage, search and share content on multiple services. Access yourGet your content in your personal internet library...This is a beta preview release. This means that it’s not really finished yet, but good enough to give it a try."

SocialNetwork.in
"To help you aggregate links to all of your profiles, including social networks, chat, VOIP, and other communities. To help you aggegate links to all the social sites you want to monitor. To help you aggregate links to all your friends on various social and chat networks. To provide a simple means for you to rate social and chat networks using a 1-10 scale and comments. To provide a simple API for developers to use to extend their services and better serve your needs and interests."

Socialstream
"Socialstream emphasizes improving social connections by making it more efficient to communicate with, share with, and view the social content of all the people in a user's online social network. Socialstream provides a compelling user experience because it aggregates content across many different networks so a user has a single location to discover new content and communicate. The goal of Socialstream is to present social information in a way that ties it to the person who posted the information, and not the site from which it came."

SocialURL
"SocialURL is a social community platform enabling you to organize your online identities. Connnect to all your social network sites with one URL."

Spokeo
"Do you know how many of your friends blog on MySpace or upload photos to Flickr?
We don't think you do...Spokeo searches popular networks for your friends' blogs, photos, videos and music...We guarantee you'll learn something new about your friends."

Tabber
"Tabber is an online social address book that allows you to: import your contacts, get updates from contacts that are Tabber members, watch your contacts live information on the web as they update it (Myspace, Blogs, Photo Galleries, and more!)"

Upscoop
"Upscoop is a fun, free service that allows you to find all your friends on all the major social networks, such as MySpace and Friendster."

Zoolit
"Zoolit is a shareable Web page that lists all your personal sites. Your Zoolit Landing Page is always current and up to date, providing the world with all of your personal Websites, Social Networks, Blogs, contact info, and Photo and Video Sharing sites...When you add, change or delete a Website address, simply make the change on your Zoolit Page and its updated everywhere you have your Zoolit Button or Link."

While it may be a daunting task to network, it seems that it may be another daunting task to choose a social network aggregator.

As it turns out, there may be a solution for those who choose not to use one of the above options.

Steve Rubel with Micro Persuasion wrote an article that explains how you can simply use your Gmail account as your aggregating tool. Here is the link to his article.
Click Here

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, it seems that social networking is expanding our time spent on the computer, instead of with personal relationships. In order to balance our time, choosing an aggregator needs to be at the top of the priority list.

Sunday Post

For all Sunday posts, please refer to the following link...

Click Here

Hope you've had a fabulous weekend!

Thank you for reading!

Today? Just Humor.

Saturday deserves some laughs. Here is a good one...

Click Here For Link

The patient demanded, "Doc, I just must have a liver transplant, a kidney transplant, a cornea transplant, a lung transplant, and a heart transplant."

"WHAT?" yelled the doctor. "Tell me, exactly why you think you need all these transplants."

"Well," explained the patient, "my boss told me that I needed to get reorganized."


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A plumber attended to a leaking faucet at the neurosurgeon's house. After a two-minute job, he demanded $150.

The neurosurgeon exclaimed, "I don't even charge that amount and I am a brain surgeon."

The plumber replied, "I agree. You are right! I too, didn't either, when I was a surgeon. That's why I switched to plumbing."

Submit To The Open Directory Project

Have you been searching for a way to get your blog URL on directories such as AOL and Google?

Here is your solution...

Submit your URL to the Open Directory Project Click Here For Link

Here is what it will say once you have submitted your site...

"Your site submission has been received.

An editor will review your submission for inclusion in the directory.

Once your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from 2 weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, AltaVista, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search, etc. We make updates of the data available weekly, but each partner has their own update schedule."

That is quite a list of included search engines! What do you have to lose? Take the time to submit to the Open Directory Project!

Being Sick Can Be Funny!

Because I haven't been well and able to post, I thought I'd write something easy for my readers to enjoy in the absense of the availability of my brain for something informative...workplace humor...for sick days...
******************************************************************************

Click Here For Link

Mr. Johnston, a businessman from Colorado, recently went on a business trip to Arizona. He immediately sent an e-mail back home to his wife, Jo Ann, to let her know that he had arrived safely.

Unfortunately, he mistyped a few letters and the e-mail ended up going to a Mrs. Joan Johnson, the wife of a preacher who had just passed away.

The preacher's wife took one look at the e-mail and promptly fainted. When she was finally revived, she nervously pointed to the message, which read: "Arrived safely, but it sure is hot down here."

Click Here For Link

I'm tired. For a couple years, I've been blaming it on iron poor blood, lack of vitamins, dieting and a dozen other maladies. But now I found out it ain't that. I'm tired because I'm overworked.

The population of this country (the USA) is 237 million. 104 million are retired. That leaves 133 million to do the work. There are 85 million in school, which leave 48 million to do the work. Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government.

This leaves 19 million to do the work. Four million are in the Armed Forces, which leaves 15 million to do the work.

Take from the total the 14,800,000 people who work for State and City Government and that leaves 200,000 to do the work.

There are 188,000 in hospitals, so that leaves 12,000 to do the work. Now, there are 11,998 people in Prisons. That leaves just two people to do the work. You and me.

Boy Oh Boy . . . And you're sitting there reading this. No wonder I'm tired, I'm the only one working.

********************************************************************************
Link Here

Jesus and Satan have an argument as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they agree to hold a contest with God as the judge.

They set themselves before their computers and begin. They type furiously for several lines of code streaming up the screen. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity.

Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over. He asks Satan to show what he had come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, "I have nothing! I lost it all when the power went out."

"Very well, then." said God, "Let us see it Jesus fared any better."

Jesus entered a command, and the screen came to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir poured forth from the speakers.

Satan was astonished and stuttered, "But how? I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact! How did he do it?"

God chuckled and replied, "Jesus saves."

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Click Here For Link

Software Revision Guide

Once you start playing with software you quickly become aware that each software package has a revision code attached to it. It is obvious that this revision code gives the sequence of changes to the product, but in reality there's substantially more information available through the rev-code than that. This article provides a guide for interpreting the meaning of the revision codes and what they actually signify.

1.0: Also known as 'one point uh-oh', or 'barely out of beta'. We had to release because the lab guys had reached a point of exhaustion and the marketing guys were in a cold sweat of terror. We're praying that you'll find it more functional than, say, a computer virus and that its operation has some resemblance to that specified in the marketing copy.

1.1: We fixed all of the killer bugs.

1.2: Uh, we introduced a few new bugs fixing the killer bugs and so we had to fix them, too.

2.0: We did the product we really wanted to do to begin with. Mind you, it's really not what the customer needs yet, but we're working on it.

2.1: Well, not surprisingly, we broke some things in making major changes so we had to fix them. But we did a really good job of testing this time, so we don't think we introduced any new bugs while we were fixing these bugs.

2.2: Uh, sorry, one slipped through. One lousy typo error and you won't believe how much trouble it caused!

2.3: Some jerk found a deep-seated bug that's been there since 1.0 and wouldn't stop nagging until we fixed it!

3.0: Hey, we finally think we've got it right! Most of the customers are really happy with this.

3.1: Of course, we did break a few little things.

4.0: More features. It's doubled in size now, by the way, and you'll need to get more memory and a faster processor.

4.1: Just one or two bugs this time - Honest!

5.0: We really need to go on to a new product, but we have an installed base out there to protect. We're cutting the staffing after this.

6.0: We had to fix a few things we broke in 5.0. Not very many, but it's been so long since we looked at this thing we might as well call it a major upgrade. Oh, yeah, we added a few flashy cosmetic features so we could justify the major upgrade number.

6.1: Since I'm leaving the company and I'm the last guy left in the lab who works on the product, I wanted to make sure that all the changes I've made are incorporated before I go. I added some cute demos, too, since I was getting pretty bored back here in my dark little corner (I kept complaining about the lighting but they wouldn't do anything). They're talking about obsolescence planning but they'll try to keep selling it for as long as there's a buck or two to be made. I'm leaving the bits in as good a shape as I can in case somebody has to tweak them, but it'll be sheer luck if no one loses them.

Ping Juiced By Networking

Stating upfront that Digg is my networking site of choice, here are a couple of other sites that are good as well. However, before I go into those sites, here is a new tool I discovered that is a companion to Digg that I thought I'd share with you... DuggTrends: mirror. Just check it out. If you want to see a great review regarding the basics on DuggTrends: mirror, click here.

Adding the StumbleUpon toolbar, makes it easy to submit articles and add to my profile (to keep articles on-file) that I have interest in. That's a pretty cool feature. However, word-to-the-wise when you're adding the toolbar...be sure that you don't have any tabs up that you are in need of keeping track of because you'll lose those as your Internet will re-boot (not your complete computer system...just the Internet, i.e., Internet Explorer). StumbleUpon has sent me many-a-visitor to my blogs and I abundantly enjoy my interaction with my readers.

del.icio.us seems, thus far, to be fairly easy to use. Interaction with my del.icio.us network seems to be the most difficult part. Posting items on their site is fairly easy. Adding people to your network is fairly easy. I have not received as many visitors through their site with my networking efforts as other sites.

Networking is a necessity in marketing your blog, increasing its traffic and attractiveness to advertisers. Additionally, there is not a "one-size-fits-all" networking site. Try a few sites to feel out which one(s) work best for your blog topic and traffic. It may take time to analyze which site(s) will be most beneficial and therefore I recommend using Google Analytics or Feedburner to analyze where your traffic is coming from.




What is the definition of "Ping (Blogging)"? This comes from Wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_blog

"Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post (or updates an old one.) That is, the tool sends an XML-RPC signal to one or more "ping servers," which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material.

Open ping servers, like VeriSign's Weblogs.com and Yahoo!'s blo.gs, let other web-services subscribe to a list of blogs that have recently pinged them.

Blog search engines can provide fresh results very quickly by polling only the newly-updated blogs. Similarly, aggregators use results from ping servers to tell subscribers which items on their subscription lists have fresh material. A few of the blog aggregators that can be pinged directly include:

BulkFeeds, FeedBurner, Google Blog Search, IceRocket, Technorati, and Yahoo

In addition to open ping servers, there are an increasing number of proprietary ping servers that gather information only for their own applications. Most of the major blog search engines operate such ping servers.

There is a conflict of interest here between the blogger--who wants his new post to get the widest possible publicity as fast as possible--and the web-service owner--who wants his search engine or aggregator to have new blog posts long before anyone else. As a result, bloggers have turned to services such as Ping-o-matic, which pings multiple proprietary ping servers. As the blogosphere has grown, other ping "services" have cropped up, such as Pingoat and BlogFlux Pinger."

Each time you post a new article, be sure to use at least one of the ping sites to register your new post. This will drive traffic to your site and increase your rating on Technorati and Alexa.

Sources:
www.technorati.com
www.alexa.com
www.del.icio.us.com
www.stumbleupon.com
www.digg.com
www.duggtrends.com
www.feedburner.com
www.google.com/analytics/
en.wikipedia.org

"Digg" These Great Ideas To Increase Traffic To Your Weblog

Here are some of my favorite articles found on Digg from this week that relate directly to blogging, technology, widgets, etc. and that benefit us all with regard to our progress in this blogging/technology industry.

I could pretend that I wrote all of this information and just re-write it to make myself look smart. However, why reinvent the wheel. These folks did all of the work and deserve the credit.

Here they are...

How 30 Minutes a Day Can Result in 250 Inbound Links
Digg Link Here
Article Link Directly Here

5 Surefire Ways to Get More Links to Your Blog
Digg Link Here
Article Link Directly Here

5 Blog Traffic Articles You Should Read
Digg Link Here
Article Link Directly Here




Increase search engine traffic to your WordPress blog with one night's work
Digg Link Here
Article Link Directly Here

What People Search For - Most Popular Keywords
Digg Link Here
Article Directly Linked Here

10 Ways to Attract New Readers to Your Blog
Digg Link Here
Article Directly Linked Here

As you can see, there is a theme within these articles and their content. The common theme is increasing the traffic to our blogs.

I think that everyone struggles with this issue. How much do you network on the social networking sites? How much to you comment on like-content blogs? What other tricks work?

For me, I will be trying any number of the items listed in these very informative articles. If they have worked for someone else, maybe they will work for me as well. Tell me your thoughts on this issue. Do you struggle with traffic to your blog location?

Register Your Site. Get More Out of Your Ping

If you have not yet done so, you need to go to the following sites to submit your weblogs or websites. What is the benefit? When you go to Ping-O-Matic or Pingoat (immediately after you post) you're sure that your sites get maximum coverage, or that you get more out of your ping. Theoretically, this adds traffic flow to your site(s).

Here are a list of the sites (that I know of) to which you need to submit your URL.

dmoz.org click here
note: they are partners with AOL and this is the only way I've found to submit my site to AOL.

AltaVista click here
note: go to the bottom directory on the main page...click on "submit site" and then do a "Basic Submit" (this is after you have already been registered at Yahoo) or the other submission areas can be costly.

Clusty click here
note: Click on "Add Your Site" on the left margin menu and look at the bulleted items.
If you try the first one, it redirects you to dmoz.org.
The MSN bullet works great, so submit your site there.
The Gigablast bullet works great, so submit your site there.
The WiseNut bullet redirects you to "Look Smart", which is another affiliate/advertising site.
Read the remainder of what Clusty has to say under the bullets




LYCOS click here
note: This is supposed to be one of the places you should submit your site to, however, I only found a way to put their logo or link on my site, which I didn't because I don't know enough about them. However, it is interesting to use their "retriever". I used it (along with its "hotbot" to look up my own name and it came up with places that others had submitted my articles. This allowed me to visit their sites and add them to my networks on places, such as StumbleUpon and Reddit.

Google is another site that is suggested for submitting your site to for their directory. When you click to submit a site on Google, it directs you to dmoz.org, which we have already discussed.

Each time you post, don't forget to ping.

Note: Refer to my post dated December 10, 2007 for information regarding pinging.

Happy Blogging!

A Joke of a Sponsorship Site

I was looking around for sponsors and investigating that option for my blogs when I came across a site called bloggingsponsorships.com.

I thought it looked credible...even enticing, so I began the sign-up process. I entered one of my blog addresses after reading a large amount of terms and rules, and gave my personal information, including the number of visitors per month I get from my site based on Google Analytics and Feedburner.




Following that information, they asked for information about what my blog site could do for the sponsor. I gave a great deal of information about how I network and the number of visitors that come from networking, in addition to the consistency in writing on the particular blog site, as well as consistency in analysing my traffic.

After taking all of that time to fill out that information, I clicked to go to the next section and guess what I found...that you have to pay bloggingsponsorships.com to get your blog on their site to find the sponsors. It's a subscription! The next page asked for the number of months that I wished to pay for and my paypal information. I tried the paypal, just to see if they really had it (since they had an option to pay via credit card on their own site) and neither one of my paypal accounts showed up as "credible" paypal accounts, according to their system.

So, just an FYI. Watch out for these guys! They are in it to get a buck from you, not the other way around.